David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson aren’t the only Baywatchers bringing in the big bucks. As I reported last week, some lifeguards in Newport Beach are pulling in more than $200,000 a year in total compensation. And, it turns out, cities up and down the coast of California are paying similar compensation for lifeguarding positions.

After uncovering Newport Beach data on a tip from Jack Wu, a former Newport council candidate, it at first seemed like the practice of paying permanent, full-time lifeguards $100,000 to $200,000 – and allowing them to retire with 90 percent of their salary after working 30 years – was confined to Newport. But after further examination , it became apparent that high pay for this profession is common practice – at least in the Golden State.

Brent Jacobsen, president of the Lifeguard Management Association in Newport Beach, said, “We have negotiated very fair and very reasonable salaries in conjunction with comparable positions and other cities up and down the coast.” He added that Newport’s lifeguard salaries “are well within the norm of other city employees.”

He is right.

Los Angeles County and other Orange County cities have similar pay scales for their lifeguards.

In 2009, at least 55 L.A. County lifeguards earned more than $100,000 in pay, excluding benefits, according to the state Controller’s Office web-based database on public employee pay. Twenty-eight “Ocean Lifeguard Specialists” were paid more than $100,000 in wages alone, as were 25 lifeguard captains. A lifeguard chief was paid $192,458, and an assistant chief was paid $195,035 – again, not counting benefits.

Right up PCH from Newport, in Huntington Beach, 13 lifeguards classified as “marine safety officers” in 2009 were paid $110,000 to $162,000, excluding benefits. A 14th marine safety officer just missed the hundred-grand club, earning $93,000.

What makes Orange County cities’ lifeguard compensation packages more offensive, though, are the lucrative pension benefits. The pension formula for the Newport Beach employees and all but one in Huntington Beach is known as “3 percent at 50,” allowing lifeguards to retire as young as 50, after 30 years of work, with 90 percent of their salary for the rest of their lives. This level is akin to what’s provided to police – the top tier among California unionized public employees. (Huntington Beach’s lifeguard division chief has a less-generous formula: 2.5 percent at 55, or 75 percent of salary after 30 years of service collectible no earlier than age 55.)

Los Angeles County lifeguards have a far less generous pension formula: 2-percent-at-50, which would provide a pension equal to 60 percent of salary after 30 years of service with a minimum retirement age of 50.

These types of pension plans – defined-benefit – are practically extinct in the private sector, where workers rely on 401(k) plans, savings and Social Security to retire. One recently retired, 51-year-old former Newport lifeguard will collect $108,000 for life, despite investment market fluctuations or city balance sheets.

These salaries alone should be motivation enough to quit your day job and head to the beach, but the retirement benefits are really the icing on the cake.

This is not to say lifeguards’ rescue work isn’t important, but the president of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, with more than 1,000 employees, for example, makes a salary of about $180,000. The chief of staff for the president of the United States is capped at $172,000.

Lucrative pay and benefits for lifeguards – and other public employees – is frankly unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible. There are plenty of good alternatives to providing such services at lower cost to taxpayers.

The county of Orange hires a private company to provide lifeguards at its beaches, including larger locations, such as Salt Creek Beach, Aliso Beach and Capistrano Beach, and smaller beaches, like Table Rock in Laguna Beach. At the very least, outsourcing gets taxpayers off the hook for lifeguard pensions, which even Newport Beach City Manager David Kiff called “unsustainable.”

Also, in countries like Australia, a huge chunk of the lifeguarding is done by volunteer groups like the Surf Life Savers clubs, a nonprofit organization that patrols beaches throughout the country. Volunteer lifeguards are not uncommon in the United States, and beach cities should put more emphasis on volunteerism and unpaid public services like lifeguarding.

At the very least, lifeguard salaries, especially at the aforementioned levels, ought to be cut drastically, and more part-time guards should be hired. And the incredibly generous pension benefits have got to go, too. We are seeing the nefarious “ratcheting effect” as one city’s lifeguards match the pay offered by another city, moving ever-upward. This model quickly loses sight of other factors that traditionally set pay, such as number of qualified applicants.

Public outrage over lifeguard pay has grown with these revelations, as it should. It is likely that these pay scales are common up and down the coast of nearly bankrupt California. Luxurious salaries and fringe benefits were commonplace for the actors on the iconic television show “Baywatch,” and so, too, are they for some real-life publicly employed lifeguards.

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